<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hi all,<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I'm still trying to get my head around the "zen" of microformats. In that vein, I really appreciated this post (hat tip to Sam Ruby) about "<FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#333333" face="Georgia" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><B>Data First vs. Structure First"</B></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#333333" face="Georgia" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><B><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></B></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/93/">http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/93/</A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#333333" face="Georgia" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><B></B></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia">Some people find the act of categorizing and abstracting natural and rewarding, others find it frustrating and unnecessary. </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia">The problem with information technologies is that computer programmers are likely to fall in the first category and users of such programs are likely to fall into the second one.</FONT></P><P style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia"><I>Data First strategies have higher usability efficiency (all rest being equal) than Structure First strategies.</I></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia"></FONT></P><DIV style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia"><I>On a local time-scale and once established, "Structure First" systems are more efficient.</I></FONT></DIV><DIV style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia"><I><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></I></FONT></DIV><DIV style="text-align: auto;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia">we all know that a complete mess is not a very good way to find stuff, so "data first" has to imply "structure later" to be able to achieve any useful capacity to manage information. Here is where things broke down in the past: not many believed that useful structures could emerge out of collected data.</FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia"><I></I></FONT></DIV><DIV style="text-align: auto;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></FONT></DIV><P style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia">But look around now: the examples of 'data emergence' are multiplying and we use them every day. </FONT><A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000">Google's PageRank</FONT></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia">, </FONT><A href="http://www.amazon.com/"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000">Amazon</FONT></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia">'s co-shopping, </FONT><A href="http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000">Citeseer</FONT></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia">'s co-citation, </FONT><A href="http://del.icio.us/popular/"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000">del.icio.us</FONT></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia"> and </FONT><A href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000">Flickr</FONT></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia"> co-tagging, </FONT><A href="http://clusty.com/"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000">Clusty</FONT></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia"> clustering, these are all examples of systems that try to make structure emerge from data, instead of imposing the structure and pretend that people fill it up with data.</FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; line-height: 16.0px"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; line-height: 16.0px">In other words, microformats seem to explicitly embody a "data-first -- but enable emergent structure later" philosophy, which is why it is both attractive and annoying to the traditional XML crowd.</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; line-height: 16.0px"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; line-height: 16.0px">Is that a fair statement?</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; line-height: 16.0px">-- Ernie P.</P><DIV style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-color: rgb(238, 238, 238); "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#222222" face="Georgia"><I></I></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>